


A Thousand Words

by Claire_Novak



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Human, First Kiss, Fluffy, Jock Dean, M/M, Photographs, Yearbook, ish, yearbook nerds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-12
Updated: 2016-01-12
Packaged: 2018-05-13 11:29:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5706016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Claire_Novak/pseuds/Claire_Novak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel Novak has been waiting his whole life for this day. The day he gets to run his own yearbook staff. As editor-in-chief he is determined that this book will be the best one he has been a part of so far. Nothing will slow this staff down, that is until a green-eyed football player walks in to the class and shakes up Castiel's idea of what the year will look like. Castiel learns to be open to new people, and of course how to love. (wow that is an awful summary, I promise the thing is better)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Thousand Words

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! I just had to write it because I am a huge yearbook nerd and I know what it is like to have someone come in and throw your entire staff off. Also high school Dean and Cas are too cute. This is my first fic so please let me know what you think and I'm sorry if it sucks. All mistakes are mine as I do not have a beta. Thanks!

It was the first day of senior year and Castiel Novak had been waiting his entire life for this day. Not just because it was the beginning of the first day of the last chapter of his high school career, but also because it was the first day he could claim the yearbook as his own. He would finally be the editor of a yearbook that he had been lucky enough to work on.

He could still remember the first time he walked in to the “yerd lounge” even the name was terrifying. He had just transferred from Iowa and he had no idea what to expect. He had run the yearbook in his junior high while doing some design work for the local high school, work that would eventually turn into templates for the company. He knew he needed to be on yearbook crew. He knew he had a place. 

What Castiel didn’t know the first time he walked in to the lounge was that only upperclassmen were allowed on the staff. He had walked in to utter silence, the type that seems forced when the members involved in it are forced into silence because a new member has joined the equation. 

“Aren’t you the new freshman?” a girl with red hair asked with enough sass Castiel couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. 

The question still threw him through a loop. He was used to a class of over 500 and here, his graduating class would be only about 50 people, of ourse even the upperclassman would know he was the new kid.

“Umm yea, is this, this is the yearbook room right?”

Laughter immediately filled the room before a senior joined in to say that upperclassmen were the only ones allowed on the team. That was until a lady walked in and the laughter stopped.

“Show me your portfolio young man,” Castiel froze unsure of what to do. “You did bring it didn’t you? You are a designer are you not? Let me see your portfolio.”

Castiel would later learn that was the adviser Missouri Mosely, and she was slightly psychic. She would be his ticket in. He would be the first of many underclassmen who were allowed the opportunity to prove they were good enough to help with the book. While many were simply used to put together mug pages or index student names, in the long run, having someone who personally knew most of the underclassmen was a blessing in disguise for the captions. 

The editors before him had been good, but Castiel was determined to make sure his senior book was great and it would be. He had a good feeling about this year. Yearbook was a double period right after lunch so Castiel had to wait all day, and to say he was jumpy would be putting it lightly. 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Dean had been the middle linebacker for his entire career at the high school and although he only started three of the four years, he was undoubtedly known as the jock at his school, and he was certainly the athlete. He had no problem with the fact that he had simply done his basics in school and had never taken a fine arts class. He didn’t need one, he had football, his advisers though did not agree.

Dean was told in his last advising meeting last year to take a fine arts class, and he would swear until the day he died that that was the reason he was taking yearbook. It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the idea of capturing someone’s memories intrigued him, not at all. 

He would never say that he was interested in the book, he would say that he wanted to make sure the football team looked good on the pages. 

He had known Ms. Mosely for years. She had tried to get him in to the class for years, and called him the second she saw his name on the list. He had been anxious from that moment on. Yet here he was in the lunge he had avoided his entire high school career waiting for the new editor to get to class. 

Dean didn’t know much about Castiel. They were in the same class, but honestly, they had never met. He knew the boy had a large family, he even had a younger brother in Sammy’s grade. He had a long name though and no one called him by it. Dean knew Castiel had spent his career behind a computer and if he was being honest, he was impressed with the work he knew the boy did. He was impressed with the boy’s dedication and maybe he could make this work.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

“What are you doing here?” Castiel couldn’t help it the question came out of his mouth before he could even process the fact that the star football player was sitting at a computer during his class period. 

“Hiya Cas. Surprised you got yourself a resident athlete for the year?”

“No, it’s Castiel, get out. This isn’t funny, we have a book to get done and you have already wasted time. If you want to come in and proof the football pages fine, but you cannot take a seat at a computer that someone could be using to be helpful.”

It was just then that Mrs. Mosely walked in and Castiel knew to be quiet before he got in trouble. Dean was in the class, and he would have to deal with it like he would deal with an inept freshman. 

“Alright then, we’ll move on I suppose. Hello, my name is Castiel welcome to the staff. I surely hope you’re in the class because you have a passion for it and not because you wanted an easy credit. This isn’t an easy class, you’ll have to work okay? Alright. Today we are working on design and photography editing. You’ll work at your own pace and if you need help after I’ve gone over it, let me know.”

And with that the day went on normal. The class seemed to be going on well, until Cas lost a section editor because of family issues and a couple staff members because the class was more difficult than they had planned. Now, he was stuck trying to manage with only himself, a photo editor, and a student life editor. At least he was still in double digits when it came to his normal staff. There was 13 of them in total, and while it wasn’t his firs choice, he would work with it. 

Ms. Mosely though did not agree and within 2 weeks, Castiel had to pick a new editor for the sports section. He knew which was the obvious choice. Dean had been doing a surprisingly good job with the design and photo elements and he knew the idea of sports, but if he was being honest, Cas didn’t really want to ask. He was maybe too proud.

“Castiel Novak you will ask that boy to be the sports editor or I will,” Ms. Mosely had said and Cas knew that if he didn’t ask soon, he would be ashamed when Missouri asked. It would look like he couldn’t get a grip. 

He would ask later. Dean almost always came in to work after practice. He said it was because his brother was in a club after school, but Cas knew Sam had a rde home for when he didn’t want to keep waiting for Dean to be done. 

Sure enough, Cas waited until after practice was over, and like clockwork, Dean walked in to the lab and began to work. 

“Hi Cas, you going to be here for a bit? I need to kill time before…”

“Before Sam is out. Yes, I will be here, just like everyday and you will be here past Sam’s release time just like every day and I won’t say anything, just like every day.”

“Cas that’s not…” Dean tried to cut in but Cas wasn’t going to let him, he had to get through this

“Shut up Dean. I need to say something. I honestly hated you being in this class. I thought it was a joke and I didn’t like it at all. I thought you would do one of a couple of things. You would either come in and be lazy and not get your work done, or you would come in and make fun of everyone in here. The more realistic one was that you would come in and do your work but you would probably get mad at everyone and try to run the room. 

“Only you didn’t do that. You came in and I suppose recognized you actually knew nothing about this class, and you learned and you’ve worked and I’m impressed. That said, I need a sport’s editor, and Ms. Mosely and I think that you would be a good fit. It’ll need some work and you’ll need to put in a bit of extra time because you need to work on your editing and your designing, but you know sport’s better than anyone else in the class. So will you do it?”

“Umm well Cas, I mean I would love to, but I’m pretty sure you’ve got the wrong man for the job. I don’t know how to even remotely help run a section, except to know what is going on in a picture.”

“No, you’ll be good at it. I just, we can work on it okay? Why don’t we start now? Tell me how you would edit this….picture.” 

Cas opened a picture that had some potential, but needed a lot of love. It was a football picture, and it wasn’t until they were halfway through changing the curves that Cas realized he had pulled up a picture of Dean. It was one he had edited before, and had the corrected film on it but he wanted to see what Dean did with what ended up being one of the favorite photos Cas had edited. 

Cas thought his picture was his favorite, that was until he saw Dean’s. Without even learning about rule of thirds, Dean had cropped and faded the picture perfectly. The coloring had been fixed so that the players popped off of the field. Dean had sharpened the school's symbol on the jersey, had darkened the edges of the picture and had brightened the whites of the visiting team’s jersey. It was almost immaculate, and Dean knew it. He was proud of it. 

“Well,” Dean spoke clearing his throat as he broke the silence in the room, “It took me a while, but you’re a good teacher Cas. This is one of the best photos of me I’v seen. Who took it?”

“I did,” Cas said just barely loud enough for Dean to hear. 

As Dean went on and on about how great of a photographer Cas was, Cas realized the one thing he had hoped to not realize. He was in love with Dean Winchester. 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 

It was nearing the end of the semester and the staff was pretty much set in place. Dean spent his days editing pages, and came in after his practices to work on his pages. He knew that in reality he should be spending his time training because there was still one last game at least, the semi-finals. But he didn’t really want to. He wanted to be working on his pages. He wanted to because he couldn’t let Cas down. Cas wanted them to win at state this year, and if Dean were being honest, he did too.

He was learning to love the editor staff. Charlie was the photography editor. She was feisty and had to have her way, but she was curious and she had a drive to photograph people’s memories. She wanted people to have something to remember. Benny was the Student life editor. He was a bit different. He looked like a lineman, but he was unfairly chill. He was interested in anything and everything and Dean could see why Cas had picked him. They seemed to be good friends, all three of them, and for a while he had felt like an outsider.

He knew though once the Star Trek vs. Star Wars argument came up and all bets were off. Dean had to join the argument and as soon as he opened his mouth, he felt more welcomed than he had before. Charlie was a Trekie, Benny a star wars fan, Cas didn’t understand why it mattered, and Dean wanted both. If there was a crossover he would have died. 

The team was welcoming him and he finally felt like maybe he could be good at things that weren’t football. Dean knew he was okay at school. He made decent grades, mostly B’s, but he really felt at home in the yerd lounge.

Dean had a team of 3 kids. 2 were upperclassmen, one was a freshman, but she was good at photography and even better at design, she reminded Dean of Cas. She even had the dark brown, almost black hair that Cas had, except her eyes weren’t nearly as blue. They didn’t look like they had captured the sky in them, they didn’t look like home, and woah did Dean need to chill out. Cas was walking over and he didn’t want to freak the guy out. 

“Hello Dean. Do you have your ladder done yet? I am trying to finalize order and design elements and it would be helpful to see the order you guys decided on.”

“Yea Cas, here ya go, Kevin insisted on color coding what was going on. He said it makes it easier to read. JV is one color, Varsity another and Junior high a third. If there is plans for a profile or short story there’s a golden star sticker next to it. There’s question marks in pencil by ones we feel have potential, but cannot finalize yet because the teams aren’t done yet.”

“That’s really well-thought out of you guys thank you. Do you have schedules and coaches organized yet? Do people know what teams they have and who the main contacts are? I didn’t know all of them but I figured what I didn’t know you would have being so involved in the athletic department.”

“Yea, for the most part I just gave them seniors and coaches names and info. The AD is a great resource though which I am sure you know. Some of the students actually respond better via social media so we talked about reaching out to them that way. We think we might be able to get some cool moments from twitter and such.”

“Alright, well it seems like you guys have it together so, keep doing what you’re doing,” and with that Cas should have left Dean’s area, but instead he stared at the sports editor until green eyes turned back to his computer screen to work realizing they had been staring too long at each other. Only, Cas didn't move. Dean realized he was standing looking over Dean’s shoulder almost as if he was inspecting Dean’s design elements. 

They weren’t set in stone yet. They had talked about doing a chronological book, but in the end, that made the process substantially more difficult and instead had to come up with some design that wasn’t a timeline. They had decided on colors and Cas had opted to let each section decide on ways to use those colors. He wanted a variety and figured once they had four or five ways they liked, the editors could go in and change the pages as needed. The idea was to take at least one color idea from each section so no editor had to totally delete all of their ideas. 

Dean hadn’t really come up with a lot so far. It was mostly just highlights and random shapes. He really wanted to let the section staff work on it. He wanted the designs to be theirs. But right now, with Cas looking over his shoulder, Dean wished he had come up with more stuff, because he kind of felt like a failure. Before he could explain though, Cas quietly stated a “nice job Dean,” and walked off to check on Charlie’s photo desk.

Dean honestly had no idea what was going on. He needed to get over it though. There was just something about Cas. Something about the way he cared so much about the book. Dean just wanted to run his hands through the blue-eyed boys hair and remind him that it was coming together and it would work out. He wanted to kiss the worry lines off the editor’s face and wow, he needed to stop that. He had a book to finish.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Finally into the last week of school, Cas had asked Charlie to take the staff photos. He warned the staff to look nice, they would take a group photo and an editor photo. Honestly, the book was coming along. About half of the pages were done or almost done and they were actually ahead of schedule. That being said, Cas was already over today. 

Dean had showed up in a rusty red worn out henley with jeans that Cas thought fit maybe a bit too tight, but he wasn’t going to complain. Dean was dressed impeccably casual yet he didn’t look too casual. Maybe it was because the was on the sport’s desk, but all Cas wanted was to peel the red and denim off of the boy’s body. He knew he needed to chill out, but he also knew he had a bit of a crush and had for a while. He wasn’t sure it would go away, but he had come to terms with the fact that Dean didn’t like him, at least not like that, and at this point he could see them being friends. Friends would be enough for Cas if that was all he could get. 

Charlie had taken the pictures. The group shot was fairly easy, but the editor photo took longer than Cas really wanted. Benny would say something that would get Charlie going and then Dean would interject and Cas would laugh and try to get it back on track which would only create an opportunity for another comment starting another cycle that was non-stop. Charlie’s freshman photographer, bless her, just kept shooting and Cas was actually quite anxious to see what the photos would look like. 

He got his chance to see them though later that day. Charlie had to leave, and Cas was now responsible for the editing of the photos. He would go through and make sure everyone’s eyes were open, which often meant photoshopping faces from one photo to another. Then he would do coloring and sharpness and if he had time, he might try to brighten some colors.

As it stood now, he was flipping through the editor pictures and feeling weirdly sad. They had tried the photo in a range of places, but his favorite was one that was taken on the wooden picnic tables out in front of the school. Charlie and Dean were sitting on the table and charlie had her feet resting on the side of Dean’s head. Benny was bending over cracking up with his elbows on his knees, you could see his face, but his mouth was open in a howl and his eyes were slammed shut. Cas, for his part, was looking at Dean with a smile on his face that Cas was sure gave away that he was crazy about Dean. His eyes were soft and his smile was pretty faint. It was something natural, like he had been used to the crazy of Dean, like he loved the crazy.

Crap. He loved Dean. This wasn’t just a little crush anymore.

And as he was sitting in the lounge having a bit of a mental breakdown and crisis, the door opened. He didn’t even totally process the body that sat down next to his. Instead he swiftly clicked the next button pulling up a similar picture of the editors. 

In this one though, Benny was more upright, his hands looking like he had just clapped, Charlie’s legs were criss-crossed and she was leaning back letting her head roll with a laugh. Cas had the same dopey look on his face, but Dean was looking back with the same one. 

Cas could argue that he liked this picture more, but in all honesty, it made his heart hurt because there seemed to be something there, and he was sure there wasn’t. Still he was stuck in a trance until a hand on his shoulder snapped him out of it. 

“That’s a good picture of us huh?” Dean said. His volume startled Cas though because while there was no one in the room to hear them, Dean had whispered it into Cas’ ear. 

Feeling daring, Cas turned in his chair before speaking, his face now inches from Dean’s. “Yea, it is. I think it’s one of my favorites.”

“One of sure, but I think I’ll have a favorite later, maybe you will too,”

“That doesn’t make sense Dean,” Cas had shot back quickly.

Dean just laughed and said “I’m foreshadowing Cas,” before leaning forward and placing his hands on Cas’s cheek and hip. stopping just short of Cas’ mouth 

“Cas, I need to know this is okay.”

Cas didn’t even answer, just launched himself into Dean’s arms. It seemed to take Dean a second to react, but soon his lips were moving against Cas’ and his hands were gripping cas tighter. Cas was gripping Dean’s shoulder, with his other hand in Dean’s hair. All he wanted was to lick into Dean’s mouth, but they were in school and he reluctantly pulled away. 

They had a lot to talk about. They both knew it. But now they at least knew how the other felt. They would continue to date, what they called silently, for the rest of the year. The truth was though that everyone knew already. They fought through college and at the end of their junior year, Dean had proposed back at the picnic table of their old high school. 

A week later, Cas got a letter in the mail from Dean. It didn’t say much just “Told you I would have another favorite” In the envelope were two photos. One that had Dean on his knee with a ring in his hand and Cas with his hands covering his mouth sitting on the picnic bench. Cas knew the situation well enough the know they were both crying, but with the photo taken far enough away and put into black and white, you couldn’t tell.

The next photo was taken just moments later as Cas pulled Dean to him wrapping his hands in his fiancees shirt. Dean was smiling into the kiss and Cas knew that would be his favorite until the day they got married, then he would have a new one. Afterall, pictures made their relationship start, it made sense they would still be there years later.


End file.
